GM plans 1,000 fuel cell cars in California

By Nichola Groom

SACRAMENTO (Reuters) - General Motors Corp plans to have 1,000 hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in California between 2012 to 2014 to comply with the state's goal to put thousands of cleaner cars on its roads.

GM has about 60 Chevrolet Equinox fuel cell vehicles in Southern California now, the automaker's vice president for research & development and planning, Larry Burns, said at the National Hydrogen Association conference here.

"The next logical play for us is to take that up to a car scale of about 1,000," Burns said in an interview.

With 1,000 cars, GM will be "in the ballpark" of meeting its share of the 7,500 zero-emissions cars California wants on its roads between 2012 and 2014, Burns said.

He said GM would also have enough fuel cell cars on the road to amass statistics on the technology's durability.

As the number of hydrogen fuel cell cars on the road increases, Burns said there would be a "tipping point" toward mainstream acceptance and financial viability for its fuel cell vehicles in 2017 or 2018.

He said increasing the number of fuel cell cars on the road would demonstrate that they are in demand and that there is a sensible business model underlying their production. "That's what I would call a tipping point," Burns said. "That could be there in 2017 or 2018."

Fuel-cell powered vehicles, which run on hydrogen and emit only water vapor, are being touted as a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, combat climate change and reduce the United States' dependency on crude oil.